These past two weeks have flown by. Between competing in Miami, putting together last-minute travel plans, and dealing with my (hopefully temporary) loss of hearing, I’ve basically been waiting for a weekend to take a breather and get my sh*t together.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the week for that. I’m heading back to Florida next week for two more meets, which I’m pretty excited about. Until then, I’ve got a ton of errands to take care of (and a movie to watch), but more on all that in a later post.

Last week I officially started my training for the year, and I was surprisingly happy with how it turned out. I came down with a cold on Monday, and I’m just now getting over it today (Sunday). So, my week definitely started a little rocky. On Tuesday I had a hard tempo workout, but I was still able to hit the times I was supposed to. Wednesday was interesting as I got back into the sprint mentality and sped through a few sets of 60m runs. By Friday I was feeling pretty good about myself. Friday is our hard workout day, and I went into it feeling both anxious about how it would go, and excited to see just where my body was really at. My running partner that day was my friend, Maya, and she was pretty anxious, too, but we pumped ourselves up and got after it.

Last Sunday I went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday and remembered just how awesome it is not to cook on Sunday. I never truly appreciated the act of “brunching” until I moved to Boston and was presented with a million restaurants offering their own variations of it. Whether I’m making it myself or eating out at some random eatery, I can’t imagine a Sunday without brunch.

Because of how hectic September was for me I couldn’t put together a good post on my goals for the month. Now that I’m back in Boston, and getting back into a stable routine, I’m jumping back into my monthly goals to keep track of what I want to get out of each month.

My last week at the All-African Games sped by much faster than the first one. Once Sunday hit, I barely had time to look for WiFi or watch any other event that wasn’t happening at the track.

The 100 preliminaries and semi-finals were scheduled to be on the first day – the first round early in the morning and the second later in the evening. This was the first day that the temperature outside actually reached a point where I could positively say it was hot. Even the ever-present fog lifted that day, and left the sun beating down on us during warm-ups…

It’s only been three days since I’ve returned from the Congo, but it still feels like a lifetime ago. There are things I miss when I get back from bigger meets like this one – the teammates I rarely get to see, meeting so many new people, the feeling of pride that comes with competing for Ghana on an international level – just to name a few. Overall, my time Brazzaville, Congo was OK at best. A lot of things didn’t go as expected, but I’ve learned over time to just roll with the punches and make the best of every opportunity I’m given…

One word to describe my first week back is: satisfying. Another word would be: sore.

Last week was my first full week back training with the team, and I was ecstatic about it. Our usual training schedule was a little off because of the long Columbus Day weekend, so everything was basically delayed a day – speed on Tuesday, tempo on Wednesday, etc., etc.

Last week, I did an ab circuit with my teammate, Tessa, after one of my weightlifting sessions, and it ended with me marveling at Tessa’s amazing ability to do each exercise longer than 20 seconds.

I’ve never been the type of person to stick to something very long, unless it happens by accident. But, as I’m trying to change my bad habits into good ones, I figured I’d challenge myself every now and then, just so I get those small bursts of accomplishments, while I wait for the bigger results to come.